After a good month or so of inaction, the fork tubes arrived.  With new industrial chrome around 20 thou thick, they should never pit again.

Went into the conservatory to put them by the bike and sniffed.  Faint smell of petrol, probably from the carb and tank vents.  Shrugged my shoulders and left.
Three days later, the next Saturday, I decided to crack on and get the forks built up and fitted.  Opened the conservatory door and extremely strong smell of petrol.

The tank had started leaking again. 

Drained the tank once again and set to building the forks.  My teeth were so clenched together, I could have bit through a 1" rebar.  I was heartily sick of that infernal machine.

 Got the forks built up and had enough for that weekend.  I had to walk away.

Suspension guys made an excellent job of the fork tubes, meanwhile the old tosspot was still haunting me.


I needed to source another tank that was not rotted through underneath and get it painted.  That was not going to be cheap.
It was time I contacted the old villain and advise him of the new circumstances he was about to be enjoying in the near future.  That tank was the final straw.  The only thing major left of his "full restoration and rebuild" was the stove enamelled frame.
I had forgiven his lies too many times.
It was time to seek reparations either voluntarily or legally.  I was fit to explode.

I sent the previous "restorer" an email detailing what I had found with the bike and all of the things he had said he had done, and in fact had not.
I said that the leaking tank was the final straw.

I sent him the site address of the original blow by blow thread that this one is based on for him to look through.
It is obvious, it was not just an account of a bike rebuild but damning evidence of a serious misrepresentation of the condition of the machine in his advertisement.

Caveat emptor in UK law does not apply in the case of material misrepresentations in advertising, where the purchaser has not had the opportunity to inspect and test an item to his satisfaction.

I got a reply from his "son".
He said that since he sold the bike, his father had been taken seriously ill and was currently in no fit state to deal with the matter.
His father had read the thread in question and was upset that I had found the bike to be in such poor condition. He had been really proud of it.

He "the son" was willing to offer a one off payment of £500 to save his dad from further upset.

I considered what would be the likely outcome of a trip to the small claims court and the judges decisions.

1. As the the seller was a motor vehicle lecturer and the fact was stated in the ad, his fully overhauled bike would be expected to be in a safe and roadworthy condition by the buyer.
Clearly it was not.

2. In respect of the rebuild, it would be reasonable for the buyer to expect the machine to be in a good and serviceble mechanical condition.
Clearly it was not.

3. It would be reasonable for a buyer to expect that any repairs expressly stated in his ad, would be of good and durable quality with the expectation of a reasonable lifetime. Clearly they were not.

4. It would be unreasonable of the buyer to expect one persons description of "restoration" to be of the same standard as his own.

5. It would be unreasonable for a buyer to expect that a restored 43 year old bike be in the same original condition as it left the factory, unless it was stated in the ad.

The judge would allow damages for the mechanical work and the tank and disallow the costs incurred for the electrical work as he did reveal problems with it in the ad and despite the wrong parts fitted, it did start and run on delivery.

I would not have submitted costs for replacing fasteners and fittings with the correct ones. Those were down to me.

I would have probably been awarded £1000. Another £500 above his "son's" offer.

So.....
If the guy is really seriously ill and needing his son to bail him out (form your own opinion on that one), would I really want to add to his misfortunes?

Am I prepared to commit to the large amount of time of building a case against him?
( A large part of my job in my motorcycle activity center days was fighting ambulance chasing lawyers and doing the legwork for the hired professionals to smooth off, if the other side was not backing down.)

Am I prepared to use a day of my annual leave for the court appearance?

All the above for £500?

I decided to take his offer in good grace as a sign of genuine regret that the bike was not as it should have been.

Onwards and upwards.  Plenty more money to be spent yet, thanks to that old goat.

Sounds a bit like it was advertised as a better than new motorcycle--but was far from it. Would you have been better to ask him for a refund & return it to him, save him & 'you' all this grief.
You'd sure not be happy with any of mine!!, but i do always tell the story 'warts & all' when selling so no surprises for the buyer.
Once i refused to sell one of my 'warts & all' 100 twins because i could tell he 'just' hadn't read the full story.
Think they only half look on their cell phone & only half see the story.

Problem being.  I bought it knowing that he had replaced all the original bolts and screws ect with cheap ebay socket head screws.
I had already made a li st and ordered genuine replacements for stuff he had got wrong.  That was before the full extent of the quality of his full restoration and rebuild became apparent.

Very early on, by the time the engine was getting sorted, I was already into a parts bill heading rapidly towards equalling the purchase price. 
There was no going back. 
There is no getting away from the fact that it was me who was the fool.  I had rules about always deeply inspecting every secondhand motor vehicle I bought.
In this case, it seemed convenient to let things slide a little.  

Ultimately I am  responsible for this crap situation.  I bought it.

 

After a bit of hunting about, I found a solid looking tank in Germany. It looked like someone had painted it with a tarbrush, but it was completely rust free inside.
Looks like it was from an old fieldbike that had been run on premix for years.
This had protected the inside of the tank.

It was very expensive though for what it was. This German bike breaker appears regularly in my ebay searches and he certainly knows how to charge.

Teeth gritted, order placed.

It was time to address those absolutely awful tyres. Vee Rubber was the make and they are horrible to mount and dismount. Rock hard, 6 ply, and stupid tight beads.

I once trialled them at the motorcycle activity center and my techies threatened to strike if I went with them. I can see their point when they routinely hand change up to 3 tyres a day.
Maxxis won the day, much to the relief of my lads.

I had seen the horrible tyres in the pics in his advert and suitable Kenda ones with the correct trials universal tread pattern were on order before the bike had even been delivered.


I noticed that the wheel bearing were far from new and thought it best to order quality replacements in as a matter of course. At least the shoes looked new.
As it turned out, the old ones were not too bad. They had not rusted, it was just the grease that dried out.
Not worth keeping though, they went straight into the scrap.


The replacement tank arrived during the hot and sweaty battle with that tyre. I was tugging on a tyre lever like a demon trying to get the bead off the rim, when it slipped and I bopped myself hard on the end of my hooter.

Door bell rang and a sweaty apparition answered the door with red face, streaming eyes and talking like he had a badly blocked up nose. Gawd knows what the delivery driver thought.

Replacement tank.


Battle over and front end rebuilt.

To cut a long story short. I contacted Barry at Image refinishing to redo my tank and sidepanels.
Back in the day, I used to use Barry for all the roadbikes that had been dropped at the training school. The off road stuff generally did not matter, usually plastic bodywork and if it was not broken, scuffs and scratches were acceptable.

However, it was bad for business if prospective customers seeking to work up to their riding tests were seeing your road bikes out and about on the road with dents, dings and scratches everywhere. Entirely different customer. They expected the training bikes to be pretty much spotlessly clean and faultless.
At this time, motorcycles no longer being a cheaper form of transport for teenagers and young people to get about on, new on road trainees tended to be older, very affluent guys having some sort of mid life crisis or keeping up with their social circle who already had bike licences from the past and just got reaquainted with them after years of bringing up kids.

Barry only did motorcycle paint and always did an excellent job, far better than factory finish.

Only problem was that the £500 for the new paint I got off the old beggar was almost £500 too little, even at trade price.
Time to dip into my pocket again.
Barry was concerned at his overheads, they had almost tripled in three months esp for the electric for running his oven.
He knew it would affect his business but had no choice.

So tank sent away to one of Barrys external contractors, vapour blasted on the outside,  insides filled with walnut  broken shells and put on a machine to rotate it.  This was to get rid of all the old dry petrol residues typically found in tanks that had been stood for a very long time with fuel in them. 
Then thoroughly cleaned out and pressure tested. 
This is what added significantly to the cost. 
Never needed it before since the bikes were all replaced at two years old or 60,000 miles and I had not factored the process in to my estimate.
Then back to Barry for refinishing.  Took almost 60 hours work in the end, 20 more than Barry estimated, but a quote is a quote.

Meantime I was struggling to find something to do for the two months the bodywork was away.

I did order a repro tax disc. It had the correct stamp for the issuing office where the bike was first registered by the dealer in 79, it had the correct fee displayed, was the correct colour for that year and the expirery date was August 1980.
Back in those days, the registration suffixes rolled over to the next yearly suffix on the first of August, so everyone mainly bought new motor vehicles then.  Hence the end of july expiry date. 
A S regixtration suffix would become a T suffix on new cars first put on the road on the 1st of August 12 months later.
We don't do that anymore.  They change twice a year.  Bummer, you only get to drive a "new" car for six months now.

The bike would not make it that far and would never be taxed again.

We do not have them in the UK anymore, they rely on numberplate recognition cameras.  The UK is one of the most camera surveillance equipped countries in the world.  They are everywhere.  Big Brother is watching...

Tax disc displaying the bikes particulars.  For policemen to tell at a glance that the bike was taxed for that year by the colour, that it had MOT if required (annually if over 3 years old), and was insured.  You could not get a tax disc without showing all the certificates.  That is exactly how the original would have looked.


 

That's quite some story & not over yet.
Ya should write a book.
Or we could download your posts then clip them together & call it "Tinkickers Journey".
Keep up the good work.

Moto Classic fork stanchions are Chinese made, but are very good quality, and about half the price of restoring, bent, and pitted originals.

Novalac epoxy tank sealers, work well on steel tanks, if proper preparation work has been carried out, and some filler material is added to increase viscosity a little, and prevent run off.

Before I took the tank over to Barry, I stripped the paint from the underside of the tank to inspect for rust eating its way through.
Very pleased to find only light surface rust in a few places.



Barry when he first saw the tank was not entirely enthusiastic with the tar brush paint effect,  but after the work was completed, he was very pleased.  It turned out to be one of the best condition tanks from that era he had seen.  Said it was like new.

Then he waved his hand in the general direction of my pocket.... Get yer money out lad.  £880 for tank, 2 sidepanels and a front fender.  At trade price 

The paint did look good enough to lick though and was as good underneath as on top.
One thing deviated from standard.  He said originally, the factory sidepanel decals were not clearcoated in.  Did I want them as standard, or clearcoated over?
I went for clearcoated.  I hate decals peeling up at the corners.

As for the old tank, I advertised that on ebay as unroadworthy and suitable for static display only.  Got £40 for it.

Bodywork returned and looking great.  Once again, Barry did a great job.  I think he is one of the best motorcycle painters in the UK.  He was never cheap though.  How he gets paint flexible enough to stick to polyprop parts without flaking off when it flexes, I have no idea, but he does.  When I picked up the parts, he twisted that front fender almost 90 degrees.
He said that under the (flaking) paint the old guy did, the front of the fender for about six inches was almost bleached white.  Must have been exposed to 40 years of sunlight through the shed window.


Paint looks far better than factory finish.

beautiful!!!